Disneyland Resort

Other Tours

There are quite a number of tours available at the Disneyland Resort -- too many for us to cover them all in detail. For example:

Welcome to Disneyland

An overview of the park. Guests are put into small groups and shown around the park, taken on top attractions, and given helpful advice about what souvenirs would make the best mementos (try the custom engraved glassware!) For the benefit of visitors from outside the U.S., tour guides speak very slowly and in a very loud voice.

Walk in Walt's Footsteps

A tour for true fans of Disneyland only! Groups of Disney fanatics are walked through the park, retracing Walt Disney's footsteps. An interesting experience, although all of the "don't walk there!" and "don't step on that" instructions from the guide (who is charged with keeping the walk authentic) get a bit tedious. No portions of the park built after 1966 are visited, and the group has to take a rather large detour through a backstage refuse area to avoid a stretch of Main Street which was completely repaved in the ‘80s.

Red Carpet Tour

Each guest or group of guests is assigned a personal tour guide. For seven hours, the guide provides priority access to all rides and attractions at Disneyland and Disney California Adventure, including back-stage areas, the secret underground tunnels, executive office spaces, and the reactor. Lunch (anything guests desire, prepared by Club 33's master chef) is provided on the balcony of the Disney Gallery, and a luxurious pedicure is offered during the meal. At the end of the day, ladies get a big hug from shirtless Tarzan, gentlemen get a kiss on the lips from Snow White, and kids get a balloon. Each guest is given 100 shares of Disney stock as a parting gift. A fair value for $50.

Ratty Black Carpet Tour

Guests are crammed into a small room and shown poorly focused slides of someone else's trip to Disneyland for an hour. When it's all over, guests leave the room single file and receive a punch in the face from Mulan (kids get a balloon). Price $2 (no stamps).

SobbingCity.com Tours

The folks who run SobbingCity.com -- the Web site that celebrates everything depressing about Disney theme parks -- have monthly tours that highlight every location in Disneyland where someone has died. From the life-stealing petrified tree stump at the edge of the Rivers of America, to the death trap that is a Main Street popcorn cart, not a gravestone is left unturned. It's not an official Disney tour, and participants risk being permanently banned from the park, but it's interesting never the less.